Betrayal
by Umino Ayame
Summary: Harry's been captured, but he's got more than Snape to worry about...


**Author's Note**: Have taken a short break from Deception, but never fear, I intend to have it finished before I head back to school. 

**Warnings**: 

OOC like woah (of the complete change-of-heart variety), torture, character death...I think that's it, actually. Rather tame, no? Spoilers for HBP, but if you haven't read it yet, shame on you. 

"Well, now, Potter. This _is_ an unpleasant surprise. To what do I owe the displeasure?" Snape drawled from the depths of the dimly lit room. His tone was one of unmistakable boredom, though Harry couldn't yet make out the hook-nosed visage the all-too-familiar voice belonged to.

Harry's bound form was shoved unceremoniously over the threshold by the pair of Death Eaters, their trademark impassive white masks sneering blankly down at him as he staggered forward a few steps, then stumbled to his knees at Snape's feet.

"Who told you?" he snapped, glaring defiantly up at Snape, whose face was still mostly in shadow. _"Who betrayed us!"_ he snarled urgently, struggling against the magical bindings that held his arms behind his back. 

The visible part of Snape's mouth curled malevolently in the flickering light provided by the single pair of candles. "I don't believe you really need to know the answer to that, Potter," he replied smoothly, flicking his wand and sending Harry flying across the room. He gestured a dismissal to the other Death Eaters, then locked the door behind them.

"Who was it? _Tell me!_" Harry demanded, laboriously dragging himself to his knees again.

"You ought to show me a bit more respect. Unfortunately for you, you are not in much of a position to be ordering _anyone_ about, much less myself." Harry was certain that Snape's unpleasant face was quirking in a cruelly satisfied sort of smirk right about now, and Harry was determined to allow him as little further entertainment from the situation as possible.

Silence reigned for a few moments while captive and captor exchanged glares.

"What shall I do with you, Potter?" Snape muttered quietly, definitely more to himself than to his prisoner. "What _shall_ I do..." he repeated in a rather sinister half-whisper, malice glinting in his black eyes. 

"You aren't going to kill me?" Harry's voice rang with sharp surprise, stunned by the possibility.

"No." His heart leapt a little--_still a chance to escape_--but plummeted again at Snape's next words. "Not..._immediately_. I've waited _much_ too long to end it so quickly." he taunted, adding, "I intend to _savour_ this victory for as long as possible."

"_You_--" Harry began to growl, but Snape cut him off before he could finish detailing exactly what he thought Snape was.

"_Crucio_." he said almost lazily, leering derisively as Harry writhed against his bindings. "Quite as good as a Silencing Charm, don't you think? And I must admit, I've waited a long time to hear you scream like that..." he laughed mirthlessly, and Harry resisted the urge to say anything, lest it earn him another Cruciatus. "And now, an old favorite..." The words had barely registered before Harry was in the air, dangling by his ankle, and Snape was laughing again. "How do _you_ like it, Potter?" For a moment, Harry wondered if Snape had gone 'round the twist; it almost sounded like he thought Harry was James...but then Harry recalled, with a wave of sickness, the dueling immediately following Dumbledore's murder, when he'd tried to use this same spell--Snape had seen it in his mind.

"Who--told--you?" he tried again, the only thing he could think of to buy himself some time as he gritted his teeth and the blood drained to his head.

"Oh, shut up, Potter, before I change my mind about Silencing you. Even _you_ should be able to guess who sold you out, given time and incentive to think about it. In fact," Snape said, his eyes gleaming again, "we'll make a game of it--we'll see if you can figure it out before you go mad."

"Er--what?" Harry asked, having trouble thinking as even more blood rushed to his head. 

"Idiot boy," the Death Eater spat. "_Crucio!_" 

The agony stopped after what felt like an eternity, though it was probably only a few minutes, regardless of how badly it left him aching.

And still, he remained upside down, with Snape still gloating at him across the room. Certainly not an ideal situation, under any circumstances.

"Pathetic. _How_ someone like you ever managed to defeat the Dark Lord even _once_--" 

"Malfoy," Harry interrupted, having finally worked out what was going on. "It has to be Malfoy," he panted again, reassuring himself.

"Of course not. He's much too transparent to pull off any sort of double-agency. _Crucio!_" 

When the pain subsided this time, leaving a smouldering kind of ache, it was hurting to breathe. Harry suspected at least one broken rib, if not more.

"Keep guessing like _that_," Snape observed mockingly, "and you'll never get it." He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the prospect.

"Shacklebolt--" Harry heard himself croaking. Kingsley had disappeared a few months ago, around the time the raids and stakeouts had begun to go so badly awry. They'd never found the body, after all, and maybe--

"No. Bellatrix did away with him personally." This piece of information hit Harry like a blow ever before Snape uttered the Cruciatus; yet another life that loathsome woman had to answer for. If it was the last thing he did, he'd make her pay.

When the curse receded this time, there was a horrible kind of give to his leg, and he'd dropped perhaps an inch closer to the floor, pain shooting up the leg and through his spine. Judging by what he knew about anatomy, Harry guessed his lower leg had popped out of the knee socket, and he was relatively certain that continuing to hang by that leg was probably ruining something important to his continued ability to walk. He grunted a little, but didn't say anything; he knew Snape would take a particularly vindictive pleasure in scarring Harry for the remainder of his presumably short life.

He almost guessed Moody, as simply the next member of the Order that came to mind, but caught himself in time. It would be stupid to endure another Cruciatus on an utterly absurd guess like that. After all, Moody had been fighting Dark wizards since before Harry was _born_, and after being captured and imitated once, he was the _last_ person Harry would expect betrayal from.

Likewise, Harry felt he could rule out Lupin. Not only had it been Voldemort's pet werewolf, Fenrir Greyback, who'd bitten Remus as a child, but Voldemort had also destroyed his four best friends, and now killed his lover, as well. Tonks had disappeared with Kingsley.

Desperately, Harry ran through the ranks of the Order he'd trusted in his mind. McGonagall had been killed almost six months ago; Mundungus was in Azkaban; Fluer had been killed last month, while trying to protect Molly, who, along with Sturgis Podmore, was now permanently damaged; Neville and Luna were in St. Mungo's intensive care and didn't know about tonight; Dean, Ernie, Susan Bones, and Anthony Goldstein had all been wiped out in the last year; the rest of the old Order had been picked off, as well, and most the new Order hadn't been trusted with raid information since they'd started going so badly wrong. 

He'd already ruled out Lupin and Moody, and Hermione-- 

Well. Hermione's parents had been murdered by Voldemort last month, and Hermione herself had gone missing the week before last. That left Harry himself, and a handful of Weasleys.

_Surely_ none of the Weasleys would cave, not after losing Arthur, Charlie, and George to the same attack that got Molly and Fluer! _Unless_-- 

"Percy Weasley," Harry guessed, wondering why he hadn't thought of Percy sooner; after all, he'd betrayed them once before. A feeble hope, but--

"_Crucio!_" 

Harry felt another rib go, and his throat was long since scraped raw from screaming, but he was more worried about the fact that he was out of ideas, as well as out of suspects.

"Come on, boy, _think_. It isn't that hard..." Snape was prodding almost eagerly over Harry's progressively hoarser yells.

Harry hung there, simply gasping in the wake of the Cruciatus and trying to think over the aches that were intensifying with every new casting. _Who's left?_

He _knew_ Bill and Fred wouldn't, not after losing their life-partners; he was also sure that Ron and Ginny wouldn't. It obviously hadn't been Harry himself, and no one had seen Hermione in two weeks, there was _no way_--

Snape still watched him, something akin to glee surfacing in the gloating sneer flickering across his face again as Harry racked his brain.

"You still don't get it, do you, Potter?" he murmured silkily, looking smug and rather amused by Harry's internal struggle.

"You know, Snape, I really don't think he does." stated a new, yet horribly entertained and horribly familiar, voice from the shadows, and Harry was suddenly afraid to look for the source, afraid of what--or _who_--he'd end up seeing, afraid he already knew. 

"Her...Hermione?" he rasped as she emerged into the dim light, surprised to see her alive. "C'mon, help me! We've got to get...out..." He paused; the other two were _laughing_, and as he looked closer, he noticed that _something_ had wrought a terrible change in Hermione. Her face was paler and sharper than he remembered; someone he didn't know peered back at him from her dark, no-longer-so-soft eyes.

"Hermione?" he repeated, more uncertainly.

"Silence, Potter." There was no sign of familiarity in that chilly tone. The fact that she'd called him _'Potter'_ hurt far more than any of the other changes, more than anything so far. Even the pain left by the Cruciatus faltered in the face of _this_.

"You see, Potter," Snape was saying as those thoughts were running through Harry's head, "desperation _changes_ a person. Transforms them, makes them capable of becoming more than they would otherwise be...Just how far do you think Granger would go, now, to _cleanse_ that dirty blood of hers?" He laughed softly at the dawning horror clearly scrawled across Harry's face.

"Hermione? That's not..." Harry gulped, "that's not _true_, is it? He's got you under the Imperius, or something, right? You haven't really..." He was babbling and he knew it, but he only managed to stop the flow of words when Hermione yanked up the sleeve of her robes, revealing the Dark Mark. The stark realization finally hit him at the sight of the Mark.

"Does this answer your question, Potter?" she smirked with a kind of vicious satisfaction in her disdainfully curling lips.

"But what about your _parents_?" Harry choked, the revulsion making it hard to speak. How could she be _doing_ this? They'd been best friends since first year! How could she have changed so _much_?

"What _about_ my parents? Want to know who killed them?" Harry had a sneaking suspicion that he didn't, but was going to find out anyway. "Want to know who murdered those filthy _Muggle_ parents of mine? _I_ did, Potter. _I did_." She was laughing again now as Harry's mouth hung open in disbelief.

"Hermione..." he mumbled, "you didn't...tell me you didn't...just listen to yourself, you sound like Voldemort...you don't mean that...I know you don't...What about your capture?"

"You really are a joke, aren't you? I _let_ them 'capture' me--I couldn't let you catch on, could I? But you know why I let it happen? Because Snape, and Lestrange, and the Dark Lord, and all the rest are _right_. They showed me the _truth_.

"Wizards have been hiding in fear of Muggles for centuries, Potter! If Muggles were really those harmlessly foolish creatures that some of you idiots seem to think, why would we still be hiding, why would we be afraid of being found out? It's because they _aren't_ harmless, as even the weakest and most deluded of us know, in our hearts. We both know that if they found us, it wouldn't be any different than last time; the Hunts would return. Sure, you boast that no real witches were killed in the Hunts, but that certainly wasn't through a lack of effort or hatred! Muggles are viciously uncivilized--any one of their wars has killed more than our last three put together! They're bloodthirsty; they can't be taught with patience. They continue killing each other, just as they would kill us if we re-emerged peacefully. They must be shown who is in control with force. It is time for wizards to return to the open world!

"The time for hiding is over. So you see, Potter," she finished quietly, her eyes blazing with her convictions, "_that_ is why the Dark Lord must win. We must take back what is ours. And _you_ must not be allowed to stand in our way."

"I daresay you know what you have to do, Granger." Snape inserted, the cold, detached tone returning. She nodded, raising her wand without a trace of hesitation or emotion.

_"Avada Kedavra!"_


End file.
